Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/150

 ship, the Jesus, which carried his flag, and among his crew was Francis Drake, his kinsman, who afterwards became famous or infamous, as our readers may interpret his career, in the maritime history of England.

The voyage was prosperous beyond Sir John's most sanguine expectations. At Sierra Leone he formed an alliance with an African tribe, then at war with their neighbours; sacked a densely peopled town, was rewarded with as many prisoners as his ships could carry; and, in the spring of the following year, found himself among the Spanish settlements conducting a business fully answering his most glittering hopes. Where the ports were open he found an easy market for his slaves, and when the governors resisted his attempts to open negotiations, he carried his purpose by force of arms, for in either case the planters were eager to deal with him. Ere the summer was over he had amassed a very large sum of money in bars of gold and silver, and other commodities, materially enhanced by even more desperate and depraved measures than that of slave dealing, as stray vessels, with valuable property on board, too frequently became objects of his plunder.

Having suffered severely during a gale of wind, which he encountered in the Gulf of Mexico, and finding also that the bottoms of his ships, foul with sea-weed and barnacles, required cleaning, he put into St. Jean d'Ulloa to refit; but the day after he entered a Spanish fleet made its appearance at the mouth of the harbour, consisting of thirteen men